


Legion of the Damned Worldbuilding

by Anonymous



Category: Legion of the Damned - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 03:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12740502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Posting on behalf of a friend.





	Legion of the Damned Worldbuilding

We’d prepared for Ragnarok for longer than we knew it was coming. Some of us lived for it. Many died for it. When the day came we knew we were prepared. I knew I was prepared. Facing the gale winds and storms of blood stood I and legions of soldiers from all corners of existence. We’d all died a million times before that day, always to come back and die again and again, masters over death and war. We were prepared, not ready.  
It’s hard to tell when someone’s drawn their last on Earth. Their pulse will fade, their eyes may darken or even close, their breath will still, but it takes time before they feel far away. The truth of it is that they’re not all that far, odds are they’re looking back at the body one last time, feeling the pull to the plane hereafter not too far removed from our own, parallel in almost all ways. But when we fell that fateful day, it was instant. There was no staring to the sky, there was no last wisp of breath, there was no last kiss goodbye. Eyes turned black as the beyond that wait for them, if any eyes were left at all. Skin paled and faded, forms crumbled to ash before our eyes and no smile of peace fell upon lips as they toppled. What we witnessed was nothing short of the erasure of existence. All we could do is hope to whatever lack of cosmic god there was that the final black would be peaceful, and we could at last sleep as we deserved. Some of us took it better than others.  
It’s been 19 years, 6 months, and 8 days since the day our reality was shattered. There were faces now in the great halls that weren’t even born before the first sundering blows were struck, and every day I wept for them. Like any replacement, no one learned their name, no one shook their hand or paid them a second glance, lucky even to be given a number when turned over to the veterans. And they wouldn’t have it any other way. All of Yggdrasil shook that day, and just as we drew blade and blood that day, every realm of existence erupted in the age-fated conflict. It was to be, as a veteran band of humans famously quoted with a bitter laugh in their voice, the war to end all wars.  
Let the record show we did not allow them to strike without warning. Scouts, sentries, sensors and scans alerted our kin, and trenches filled as engines of war roared to life amidst the shouting of orders and the bellowing of war cries. To that day I had never seen anything so beautiful. Creatures of all kinds stood together, side by side, shoulder to carapace, ephemeral form to shining plate, elbow to cheek, cheek to ankle, gargantuan behemoths of steel or flesh or ectoplasm towering over hordes of warriors, be they standing on two legs or four, pseudopod or wing, grav-lift or gaseous cloud, the fallen of eternity stood together, united as one. In one voice that cannot be experienced nor replicated without an illness that would drive one to madness, they bellowed defiance at that which would come to fell the world tree.  
Their hearts lasted longer than we expected or could ever have asked.  
Behind the closed doors of the inner halls, where the gods and few chosen souls convened, tears ran like Jupiter’s rain; heavy, hard, bitter, and dangerous. Our brothers, our sisters, lovers and children, kin whose bonds were sacred before life itself, were gone. There would be no second chance, no better place, no great hall, no benediction. Last words may have been exchanged a decade before, with only tears and mementos left to remember someone who was a part of you. That might have been the hardest part for me. Before that day I had held many a dying comrade in my arms, tears in my eyes, blood on their lips. Until then, we knew we would meet again. “Until next winter” we would say, and give them over to the Great Hall where they would rest and make ready. Some still said it. “Until next winter.” It would be the longest, darkest winter.  
Two years after our ground zero, spirits faded. The ranks thinned on all sides, units consolidated, theaters of battle stretched sometimes for aeons with only a handful of souls fighting for it, support and supplies flittering forth and from more like ghosts of former lives than any tangible addition. Two years in was when we knew. There would be no victory, there would be no peace, an eternity of blood until we were granted the peace of the endless night. Those that feared it began to crave it. Those that longed for it began to doubt. Variations of the phrase “Berlin by Christmas” became ubiquitous, even amongst those who had never bunked with a human.  
But despite the doubts, despite the tears and the heartache, we held the sanctity of Yggdrasil for nigh on two decades.  
On that day, a legion of heroes stood against the annihilation of all of existence, and still they stand, ever vigilant, ever vengeful, and even though we’ve all reached the breaking point over and over, crying faces hidden behind masked helmets or sealed doors, ever indomitable.


End file.
